Today’s episode is directed at those of you who are working to build a business, whether that’s a blog as a business, or maybe you identify more as an entrepreneur. Either way, I want to chat with you about your nonfiction book and how it can help you build your business. Specifically, I want to focus on one mindset shift that I think that you should make as a author or prospective author: thinking beyond royalties. I want you to really take the time to consider what your book is going to do for your business or your blog. And, I want you to think about how your book is going to do so much more for your business than just bring in money through book sales.
WHY YOU NEED TO THINK BEYOND ROYALTIES
(This is a direct transcript of the episode. Please excuse any typos.)
Believe me, it absolutely will. So a little bit of a story from my own business to tell you. Last month (and I’m recording this in June of 2018), so May of 2018, was my highest revenue month ever high. Made more money than I ever have before in my life and I did that while working 20 hours or less a week. I’ve got childcare for 15 hours a week and then I can squeeze in a little bit of work early in the mornings. Uh, but overall I’m pretty constrained by time and I was still able to get all of that done in that short of period of time. And by the way, the entire last week of May, I was out of the country. My sister in law got married in England. And so really I was around for maybe like, let’s say three quarters of the month working.
And even then remember every week I am most put in 25 hours a week of work. But honestly that’s probably a little high. I’ll be lucky honestly if I can get in 20 hours a week of work. So really the reason why I’m telling you about all of that is so that you can really understand the power of a book and what it can do for your business. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’ve used my book blogger to author to help me leverage my consulting business and to help me really leverage my services business first and foremost, and yes, it’s not my only marketing tool, but I will say that having that book does absolutely help build my expert status and I could certainly be doing what I’m doing without having written a book. I have a lot of what I’m doing right now is copywriting and copy editing for clients and especially in my bigger projects or book projects.
That said, I’m still very qualified to do what I’m doing. Even if I never self published a book before. A lot of what I’m working on now is with health and fitness experts and so I’m leveraging my degrees. I have a master’s and a PhD in biological sciences and so I’m leveraging that science background and helping me create some really kick butt books for health and fitness entrepreneurs that are based not only in great experience and strategies that actually work in everyday people, but also strategies that are backed by science and so that allows my clients to have some really unique positioning. When it comes to their books and it allows me to use a really awesome skill set up, but I guess my point here is that yes, I could absolutely still be doing what I’m doing if I hadn’t self published my book.
I don’t think that any of the editing and writing gigs that I’ve got going on, those aren’t necessarily up because I have my book. Yeah, somewhat the consulting ones are, but if I didn’t have my book, I would still be doing what I’m doing, but because I have my book, I’m able to again add in this whole extra level of authority and it’s really helped me build a, my status as an expert in editing books, especially health and fitness books since I’ve written three of them and it just helps me number one, land jobs because people see all of that on my website and on my resume and they see that I’ve done it and that experience definitely helps me. But again, it’s not that I’ve gotten some special skills that uh, yes at home things, but that’s just time. That’s not something that the book explicitly taught me how to do, but having those books has really allowed me to say, Hey, I’m special and I do all of these amazing things and I would love to help you and I’m able to continually raise my rates and charge what I’m worth and just, you know, it makes a huge difference in my business financially.
So what’s the point of this entire story? I want you to think about your book, whether it’s just a little twinkle in your eye or something that’s on your bucket list or whether it’s starting to become more tangible. Maybe you’ve put together that book plan or outline. Maybe you’ve even started to write it. Maybe you have been writing blog posts or going live on Facebook and you intend to take that content and use it as part of the material for your book. Maybe you are getting ready to publish in a couple of weeks or couple of months where ever you are on that continuum. I want to open your eyes to everything that a book is going to do for your business and how it absolutely will help your bottom line and way beyond what you’ll make in royalties. Even, you know, very successful people I’ve known who have self published books.
Yeah, let’s talk average. The successful person, they’re probably making a couple of hundred dollars a month with their book royalties. Maybe a couple of them are making a thousand dollars or maybe slightly over that, but nobody are. Most self published authors. The vast, vast majority of them are not making tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and a lot of them may even be making hundreds of dollars a month or possibly even less on their book sales. But even if you’re not making a ton of sales with your book, it still does so much for you. So. And another example here is that like, seriously, every time I take a selfie with my book and post it on Instagram or on insta stories, it’s just like this added level of professionalism and it gives me so much more clout and it just makes people look at me differently and consider me differently all because I have a book and it doesn’t matter that my book is self published shirt.
Maybe some people would look at me differently or look at that book differently if it was with a traditional publisher, but still I can tell you that a self published book is better than no book at all. And so if you are looking to have that added authority piece, if you’re looking to build your expert status, if you want to show everybody that you really are a thought leader in your niche, even if you never sell a book and you never make a cent off of that book. Just having that book to hold to give out to people, advertising and marketing and just having it to show that you know enough about this to write a book. It just, again, it. There’s a switch in people’s minds that makes them take you more seriously. They look at you in a new way, in a bigger way.
They have more respect for you. They see that you know what you’re doing, and that mindset shift in their minds, in the way that they now view you is absolutely going to translate into more dollars in your pocket. Now granted, usually when you are working to build awareness, even of just the fact that you are an author and using that as an authority piece, you will naturally also sell more books because people will be more aware of your book, so it’s going to help you on multiple levels, but bottom line is that it’s going to help you. Again, your book will help you way, way more than just royalties. Yes, your royalties will help, but there is so much more to the financial equation and the financial impact of your book and so I really want to make sure that you are thinking big picture with your book and what your book will do for you.
And this is especially true when you’re trying to think about your goals and your tasks and what you want to do with the rest of your month, the rest of the quarter, the rest of the year, whatever timeline you’re working on for your goals. So for example, if you’ve set a financial goal for yourself to make $5,000 a month and you want to get yourself there, and maybe you’re sitting there and making calculations and saying, okay, well I might not sell too many books, so maybe it’s not worth doing well. That’s not really accurately estimating the financial impact of that book you’re going to write. So when you are making those decisions, when you’re deciding how you should spend your time and how much time you should spend on each component, I want you to factor that in. I want you to factor in the entire impact of your book.
So how is your book going to affect the quantity of traffic to your website? How is your book going to effect how many people you have in your Facebook group? How is it going to affect your email subscribers? And then most importantly, consider how it’s going to impact the revenue streams that you have in your business. Is it going to help you sell more courses? Is it going to help you get more clients for strategy or consulting? Is it going to help you get more clients for your services? And then on top of that, is it going to allow you to raise your rates for the things you were already doing because you are now known as a bigger expert because you have shown that you are a bigger expert because of your book and through your book. So ask yourself those questions. I challenge you here to take a couple of minutes, maybe if you’re waiting for public transit or just kinda hanging out, maybe time when you would normally be sitting, scrolling through your Instagram feed.
Instead, just take a minute to think through your book and to analyze everything is going to do for you and then make sure that you put in the corresponding and appropriate amount of time and work into finishing it. I really do think that a book is going to be a game changer for you. And Your Business, and it’s just going to do amazing things for you. So I really hope that you will start to make it a priority and start to dedicate at least a little bit of time every week to getting closer to publishing your book.
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